The Franconia plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 70° in 1990.
Franconia’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Mountain, about 1,090 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Franconia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,840 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Franconia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franconia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Franconia normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 at Forest Lake 5 NE, 7 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
